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The PBR Texture Set node is designed as a one stop solution for using a set of PBR textures. It supports both the Metallic and Specular PBR workflows and even converts between both of them if required.
When used with the native Principled BSDF material, a Metallic workflow is preferred.
The node uses a single Projection connected to it for all the images it manages.
If no Projection is connected to the node, it will used the default UVs.
There's also an option to use the built-in triplanar mapping, allowing for quick texturing of generic meshes.
This pop-up allows you to save, load and manage presets of the node settings. This allows you to re-use PBR texture sets.
This pop-up allows for the simple loading of PBR texture sets from files, using file name matching to autmatically assign them to texture slots.
This opens a file requester which has two modes of operation:
Load Textures… will only load images into empty texture slots, unless Clear before Loading is enabled in the Settings.
Clears all texture slots.
This opens the settings window which allows you to change how the plugin will use the image file names to determine which texture slots they should be assigned to.
The settings are saved in the settings folder of the current LightWave 3D installation - not with the plugin itself. To manage multiple naming conventions, these settings can be saved as presets.
This determines if the current loaded textures conform to the Metallic or Specular PBR workflow. Node outputs will be converted as required.
If Metallic is enabled, the Metallic and Roughness textures will be visible. The Colour texture will be interpreted as Base Colour.
If Specular is enabled, the Specular and Roughness textures will be visible. The Colour texture will be interpreted as Diffuse Colour.
Below this you will find a section of pop-ups to select images for the individual channels of a PBR texture set as well as related controls.
This is an optional displacement/height map which can also be used to compute a bump map.
Triplanar mapping is a type of cubic texture mapping with edge blending.
Please have a look at the Triplanar Mapper for a more elaborate explanation.
Activating this toggle enables Triplanar mapping, overring the Projection input and the use of the default UVs. It also enables the controls below used to control the mapping.
Controls not described here work identically to those used by the native 2D Image node.
This controls how hard/soft the blend of the planar projections is as the normals point away from the major axes.
0% Blend | 20% Blend | 50% Blend | 100% Blend |
We recommend a value between 5% and 20% for most uses.
This controls if the blending is computed in local or in world space. Please note, this only affects how the blending is computed, not how the images are projected.
If this option is enabled, the projected image will be flipped on the U texture coordinate axis on the negative side of the projection. This can be used to make images containing text be readable on the back side of a mesh as well.
Adds an offset to the computed UV coordinates. This can even be used to animate a texture across a surface.
The following inputs are only used if Triplanar Mapping is enabled.
Most of the outputs correspond directly to a mapped image texture. Depending on the PBR mode of the node, some of these may be converted/synthesised from the loaded images.
For example, if a texture set using a Metallic workflow is loaded, the Specular and Glossiness outputs will be synthesised. Likewise, using a Specular workflow, the Metallic and Roughness outputs will be synthesised.
The brackets behind the outputs describe the native workflow for the outputs, the others are shared between both types of texturing workflows.
The displacement away from the surface, optionally multiplied.
The bump map which is computed from a displacement map if one is present in the texture set.
This is the plugin of the month for November 2020, made possible by the finest patrons on Patreon.
We'd like to thank Antti Järvelä from the LightWave 3D Group in helping us figure out the specifics of the bump mapping code in LightWave 3D.